So Much Cooking by Naomi Kritzer - <AUTHOR> http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_11_15/ <comment><AUTHOR> I think that this, although it is fiction, provides a fantastic look at a life under quarantine.</comment>


An inside look at YouTube's new ad-free subscription service - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/21/9566973/youtube-red-ad-free-offline-paid-subscription-service <comment><USER2> This service seems squarely aimed at mobile users- blocking ads and allowing YouTube to play in the background are two functionalities that are already enabled on desktop (with the addition of a browser-based adblocker). I'll be honest, it took me a minute or two to wrap my head around paying money to block ads on YouTube since I already do that with a browser extension.

Is YouTube really that popular on mobile? With Netflix and Spotify already having mobile apps I don't see many people paying $10 a month for the ability to skip ads and play YouTube music in the background. And as for "exclusive YouTube content" it makes zero sense to have the same monthly fee as Netflix and somehow think that PewDiePie is going to compete with Orange is the New Black or House of Cards.

<comment><USER3> > And as for "exclusive YouTube content" it makes zero sense to have the same > monthly fee as Netflix and somehow think that PewDiePie is going to compete > with Orange is the New Black or House of Cards.

The (mostly teenage) audience for Youtube celebrities is _massive_ , and is probably mostly invisible to you if you don't know any kids. I don't know whether they'd be willing to pay for a subscription service, but regardless of whether you think Netflix is higher quality than Youtube, there are _many millions_ of people who get their entertainment mostly just from Youtube.

<comment><USER4> ...and I weep for a generation raised on LolCatz and FailzTeenThrob

<comment><USER5> And your parents weeped for a generation raised by MTV. It is very easy to mis-characterise and or dismiss the younger generation's content, it is also ironic as your parents and their parents did exactly the same thing.

<comment><USER4> You missed by about 20 years, but yeah. And no, I watched the same things as my parents on an old B&W TV every evening. This fracture has not been going on forever; its not healthy or natural; its only happened since TV hit the mainstream. For the first 1M years we all heard the same stories; we shared a culture.

<comment><USER6> Gonna need a citation there, buddy. Before TV it was radio, before radio it was movies, before movies it was Balzac, and so on and so forth...

<comment><USER4> So the slide goes a few more decades? I agree, that's probable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Google should consider lumping in membership of Contributor in with YouTube Red for the $10 a month fee. That would be a great product - (Google) ad-free web plus ad-free YouTube that works in the background on mobile devices and offline (as long as you download the video first).

I'd be more likely to pay for that than the two services separately. This feels a little too close to the scenario where you're paying every advertising network in the world a subscription each month.

[https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/](https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/)

</comment><comment><USER8> My main question is: How is my money distributed? If I only watch a single video in a given month, will that creator get my $10 (usually called "subscriber share model") will my money go into a big pool which is distributed equally by clicks, in which case the creator of my favorite video will get almost nothing?

<comment><USER9> I wonder the same thing. My assumption is that it will (unfortunately) be similar to Spotify's model. Distribution of those subscription dollars will be based on total views platform wide rather than on your individual views. So even if you only watch videos from one channel, they will only get a piece of your $10 proportional to their total views among all videos on Youtube. Who knows though, being a Google property, it wouldn't surprise me that they have a more complex algorithm.

<comment><USER10> If the payment is proportional to the view distribution among Youtube Red subscribers, I'm not sure whether the methods would work out very differently.

Actually I guess one way it could get skewed if the viewers of one channel on average watch more/fewer videos than the population at large. Hopefully they figure out how to weight the value of a given minute of "view time" for fix-it videos etc vs music videos which are running in the background.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My nieces love pewdiepie... Easy xmas gift.

I watch a few short series on youtube while working... it's a fine medium for content. 10 bucks seems steep to me... but I also don't pay for cable.

I can see this working.

<comment><USER12> The best part is that it's wrapped in with Google Play Music. So I don't have to pay anything extra for more stuff? Works for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess I don't understand what's supposed to be so great about this. Youtube is going to the cable subscription model. Hooray?

Everyone knows that the next few years is about consumers "cutting the cord" from cable bundles so they can pay the same amount for bundled streaming services. So Youtube is joining the list of paid streaming services. Not surprising, or exciting.

Everyone already seems to acknowledge that paid streaming services will go the same way cable TV went: first you're paying for no ads, but in a few years you're paying with ads, too. This goes beyond "not exciting" and right to "bad for consumers."

The only big question for me is, if "information wants to be free" really is baked into the digital world... who's going to do to Youtube, what Youtube did to cable TV?

<comment><USER14> Brand's complete quote is more illustrating of the dilemma:

"On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other"

<comment><USER15> > On the other hand, information wants to be free

The original context of this axiom was that information will tend towards making itself free of confines, not cost.

The free-beerness is a consequence of this liberation, not the goal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What are they going to do about the ads creators do inside their videos? Unless they ban "This video is supported by..." type content inside videos there will still be ads, just not Youtube separate ads. And banning those ads will probably end many channels who rely on them to make up for Youtube's pretty lousy ad pay-out.

</comment><comment><USER17> I signed up early for Google Play Music and got it at £7.99 instead of £9.99 - if they keep that price and add this I think I'll be pretty pleased.

</comment><comment><USER18> The ad-free Youtube service I use is called youtube-dl.

<comment><USER19> With first-class Windows support; impressive!

[https://rg3.github.io/youtube- dl/download.html](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> >"I make a little bit of money from ads, not much, but something," she recently explained. The real money these days is in product placement" Why doesn't Google just buy [https://famebit.com/](https://famebit.com/) ?

</comment><comment><USER21> How does this subscription affect content creators on youtube who monetize based on ads?

<comment><USER22> They will be forced to share the subscription revenue as per tech-crunch [1].

1\. [http://techcrunch.com/video/youtube-red-strips-out-ads- but-b...](http://techcrunch.com/video/youtube-red-strips-out-ads-but-bullies- creators-into-deals-crunch-report/519176342/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Google should remove ads for people who upload videos that generate a lot of traffic. That way, you can fight ads by generating more ads yourself :)

</comment><comment><USER24> Sounds like a consequence of Youtube not being able to purchase Twitch</comment>


One reason airline food is so bad? Your own tastebuds - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/one-reason-airline-food-so-bad-your-own-tastebuds-6C10823522 <comment><USER2> Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't hate airline food. They're not the best meals I've ever had, but they're almost universally tolerable.

<comment><USER3> Yes, tolerable; upvote for pointing that out.

Having just flown for the 2nd & 3rd times this year, I was reminded that back in the 1980s when I flew a lot I identified the true purpose of airline meals as crowd control--you're not wandering about the aisles when you (and maybe the people inside you) have a loaded tray down across your lap.</comment></comment>


ZigBee - Low Power, Low Cost, Mesh wireless for control/sensor network - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigBee

<comment><USER2> We actually used these for a project that we did at my university. We have been doing a lot of research with high altitude balloons and we used these to create a mesh network between the balloons so that we could sync the data and get a more 3-dimensional view of the various measurements that we were taking. It worked perfectly on the ground, but a few of the devices had communication problems at high altitude. This was almost certainly a fault of higher levels of radiation and increased distance between the equipment than any flaw in the devices themselves. Overall, they are a very handy product.

</comment><comment><USER3> sorta like these... <http://www.digi.com/technology/wireless/products.jsp> <http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php?c=111>

Google made a wireless epaper meeting schedule display with these... <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyHaImmmkGs></comment>


Zero grows a camera connector - <AUTHOR> https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/zero-grows-camera-connector/ <comment><USER2> No love for this on HN, very odd. The PI Zero is great for many reasons, especially for its size and price - making hacking and playing with clusters very accessible..

Docker plays very well and also Swarm.. check this out if you are into DevOps/distributed

[http://blog.alexellis.io/dockerswarm- pizero/](http://blog.alexellis.io/dockerswarm-pizero/)</comment>


GQ and Forbes Prevent access to browsers utilizing adblockers - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151229/08111133184/gq-forbes-go-after-adblocker-users-rather-than-their-own-shitty-advertising-inventory.shtml <comment><USER2> Company spends millions hiring reporters, photographers, editors, webmasters, etc and then wants you do see a few ads. Oh the horror.

<comment><USER3> Lots of companies spend money to run their business and have an online presence. It doesn't give you an automatic "success" pass. It also doesn't give you immunity from people laughing at you and ceasing to use your service when you do something idiotic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Goodbye GQ and Forbes.</comment>


Intel's Thunderbolt 2 Doubles Bandwidth, Enabling 4K Video Transfer & Display - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2013/06/video-creation-bolts-ahead-%E2%80%93-intel%E2%80%99s-thunderbolt%E2%84%A2-2-doubles-bandwidth-enabling-4k-video-transfer-display-2/ <comment><USER2> This seems like interesting timing - hopefully the announcements at WWDC are taking advantage of Thunderbolt 2. This might be what Apple was waiting for to update the ageing Mac Pro.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Thunderbolt 2 is currently slated to begin production before the end of this year, and ramp into 2014"

I sense some more waiting.....

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Thunderbolt 2 promises even more boutique external hard drives, external docks, and monitors. The best part is that they will be twice as expensive as the already expensive Thunderbolt 1 peripherals."

</comment><comment><USER4> hopefully they release proper specs for the linux kernel team.</comment>


The Taxi Driver Taught Me An MBA Lesson - <AUTHOR> http://www.spug.sg/forums/showpost.php?p=1314702&postcount=1

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a link to the translation posted in a forum. The original, in Chinese, is at <http://blog.run2me.com/runliu/archive/2006/03/15/14311.aspx>

PS: Deleted the previous submission since I couldn't edit the URL. Thanks to davi for pointing out that both links pointed to the same URL previously.</comment>


Predictions for the Coronavirus Stock Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/business/stock-market-predictions-coronavirus-shiller.html <comment><USER2> You should check out [https://flux.market](https://flux.market) We have markets trading on different aspects relating to the impacts of the corona virus.</comment>


Faking it. - <AUTHOR> http://sahillavingia.com/blog/2010/11/19/faking-it/ <comment><USER2> It think "fake buzz" is killing the Internet's credibility. I actually think that spending tons of time tweeting and posting testimonials on sites [rather than working on making better products and services] is exactly what's killing the quality of goods and services in society these days. Fake testimonials are for "As Seen On TV" ads, but for a reliable and trustworthy company that plans on longevity, I think its a 100% bad move. Let the real and unbiased testimonials from people about your business be REAL and UNBIASED if you plan on thriving in the long run of business life.

Think about it this way, if testimonials are rigged, what metrics are companies then using to improve their products? Testimonials influence and taint the opinions of others.

This is the reason why some people have 100,000 followers on Twitter, because they work for an AD agency that creates phony accounts and then adds those users in order to "Fake" the idea that the account is truly popular. This reduces the credibility of your Twitter account and your entire presence on the Internet.

Do you get jealous because a friend or competitor has more "followers" than you? You shouldn't. you should congratulate them instead. You never know how or why they got there, and they may be behind you the next day.

"Faking it until you make" it is not a good way to go. You should generate real metrics, a real reputation, and a solid product or service, thats the only way to sustained and long-term success, and its always been that way.

<comment><USER3> _...is exactly what's killing the quality of goods and services in society these days._

I'm not sure what society you live in, but I live in a society that's _jam- packed_ with amazing stuff. I take most of it for granted most of the time, but I have thousands of amazing products, services, and experiences available with just a few clicks, at prices that are absolutely unbelievable compared with what was available 50 years ago.

Besides, this kind of "fake buzz" bullshit has been around for a long time; it's called advertising.

<comment><USER2> And that's the same reason why we had to create "Truth In Advertising" legislation, and why the word Free no longer has to mean anything. And why Wal-Mart foists cheap plastic crap on us, rather than products that truly work and last a long time. If you create a fake world, you can't complain when you'll have to live in it. :) No Disrespect, but honesty, and authenticity is not for sale, and you can't build a house on a fake foundation, it always crumbles eventually.

<comment><USER3> You're cherry-picking, and we both know I could do the same thing, listing brands and companies that do create great products and services, but perhaps we can just agree to disagree. I think the world today is generally better than it used to be. Yes, even some of that "cheap plastic crap" from Walmart. If I want a cheap trash can to go next to the workbench in my garage, it's nice that I can buy one for $3.88 at Wal-Mart, instead of having to purchase a $17 metal can hand-crafted by someone in a local factory. They both do the same job, they'll last the same amount of time, but one is 1/5th the price. And I'm fine with that.

<comment><USER2> Like I said, No Disrespect, we all have different examples of how this post relates to us in business. I'm mainly stating that ethics weigh heavily in terms of how I do business, and if you take shortcuts or fake moves in terms of building business, your ethics become questionable...

<comment><USER3> * I'm mainly stating that ethics weigh heavily in terms of how I do business, and if you take shortcuts or fake moves in terms of building business, your ethics become questionable...*

Oh, I couldn't agree more. I was just taking issue with the assertion that products and services are getting worse. We definitely agree on the importance of being honest.

<comment><USER2> The part about hating WalMart is a recurring "joke signature" that I have just begun to add to all of my posts. They just announced that they're moving into my neighborhood in DC right now, and I'm not too happy about it. Don't worry too much about that. LOL :P

<comment><USER4> > The part about hating WalMart is a recurring "joke signature" that I have > just begun to add to all of my posts.

Tribal signaling

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is more or less what I did with my site, Scribophile. The site is based on writers critiquing the writing of others, with a point system to make sure everyone gets critiques. When I just started, it was kind of a chicken-and-egg problem: without existing work to critique, nobody could earn points to post their own writing; but without points, nobody could post their own work for critique. And worst of all, without an existing user base, there would be nobody around to critique writing that was posted.

I solved this problem by basically faking it. When the site just started, I let people post writing without spending points. I would then personally critique that writing myself through several fake accounts. These critiques not only made new members feel as if there was already a community in place (thus encouraging them to stay), but they also made sure that people felt as if the site was useful, and made them want to contribute with critiques of their own. I don't write for pleasure, but I posted some works I had written just for the occasion. I didn't care about the critiques they received; the important part was making people think there was a community already there. I also recruited some friends who weren't really writers to participate on the site at the beginning to solidify the illusion of an existing community.

I also had a general "company" user account that I used to interact with everyone on a site-support level. This gave the illusion that there was more than one person behind the scenes. At the time I felt that having a web site that seemed to be run by a proper company instead of a guy in his basement went a long way for credibility. I never gave away the fact that it was just me. I would sign all support requests with "Scribophile Support" instead of "Alex."

As time went on and the site grew, I stopped critiquing by hand, thanked my non-writer friends for helping me and told them they didn't have to participate in the site any more, and eventually stopped using the "company" account in favor of my personal one. Everyone now knows that I'm the owner of the site and the guy behind the scenes. I sign support requests with my name instead of "Support."

I have no doubt that if I hadn't "faked it" in the beginning, the site would never have gotten the traction that it now has. It was essential for getting a community site bootstrapped with a $0 marketing budget and the chicken-and-egg problem that all community sites face.

<comment><USER6> Nice site which really helps a community! I'm a little curious - How are you planning to make money with this? Or do you have a different goal ?

<comment><USER5> Scribophile is my full-time job. Members sign up for a limited free account. They can upgrade to a monthly paid premium subscription that includes many features that the free plan doesn't.

It's not making me a millionare, but I've spent the past few years traveling the world off of what Scribophile has made. Right now if I live frugally, which I generally do, it can support me indefinitely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I disagree with your post. When you represent one thing and do another, it is call lying and it is a slippery slope.

What happens if you prime the pump with using questionable means and it works?

* You now have a lead a growing company. You are the moral compass of the company. Are you the guy to say they should be acting ethically even when it is harder to do so? Do you expect people to believe you? If they don't, do you expect them to respect you? Can you lead without that?

* How much trust can there be between people that know you will shave the edges if there's immediate gain? How long until this behavior results in a bunch of corporate sharks instead of a team working on a goal together?

I lead. I have been right here. CPAPAuction.com isn't a huge business and we need to project activity to grow, but damn it, the metrics are real. I run other businesses that have done better. The people working in those businesses know that those metrics are real too, as are their pay checks and managements communications relating to future prospects.

I've been in plenty of other situations where I could see no white or black to choose from even if I wanted to, only gray. In those dark times, you need people around you who know in their gut that you are moral.

I feel like I get it.

But the thing I get is that you never, ever pull this crap. You never give an inch when you aren't absolutely force fed an impossibly difficult situation. You let your people see you doing the work and what you get back in exchange is the ability to build strong teams, be wealthy and sleep at night.

Buy cheaper desks and put the money into integrity. Then earn it.

PS. If you answer posts/list items/take the action your website exists to facilitate and identify yourself as with the company, I see no moral issue. If you don't identify yourself, I do see that as being dishonest with your user base and by extension, everyone associated with your company.

<comment><USER8> <http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html>

4\. Naughtiness

Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter.

<comment><USER9> It's kind of creepy when people quote Paul Graham like it's gospel.

<comment><USER10> But in this case I think it's appropriate. Naughtiness does seem more prevalent in successful people than in average joes.

<comment><USER11> I disagree. Not with PG, but with a quote from him being a worthwhile comment. The OP was sincere; I think he deserved an actual response, not a robotic one listing the relevant entry in the works of PG.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article kind of contradicts itself:

Earlier: "Of course, this doesn't mean put up false testimonials... create fake real-time activity"

Later on advocating: "[REDACTED] takes their real-time user numbers and multiplies them by a randomly generated number. Whereas before, it would say "6 users online," it would say "68 users online."

That it is pure lying and it is bad.

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't mean you should, but many startups do anyways. Yeah, it is lying, and it is bad. But if that's going to increase your conversions by a significant amount, that benefit may outweigh the moral cost.

Note: I've never done anything like this (lying to users about numbers or what-have-you).

<comment><USER13> > But if that's going to increase your conversions by a significant amount, > that benefit may outweigh the moral cost.

It's never right to do wrong to get the opportunity to do right. Morals do not budge.

<comment><USER14> You mean, _your system of virtue-based ethics_ do not budge. My system of consequentialist ethics do.

<comment><USER13> You may disagree, but I mean what I say.

My morals do not budge; this is due to the Originator thereof never changing. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immutability_(theology)>

<comment><USER14> And what I meant is that the word "morals" an empty node (<http://lesswrong.com/lw/nm/disguised_queries/>) in objective-definition- space, and needs to be broken down into its constituent definitions—which, in your case, means virtue-based ethics. There is no property of "morality" that you have that cannot be explained by your being a virtue ethicist; thus, you must dissolve the idea altogether.

<comment><USER13> I believe you are missing my point: I am not a virtue-based ethics. Edit: Forgive me if I'm missing your point.

I am a Bible-based ethicist, the Bible originated with God, Who never changes; ergo, His morals (or ethics, as you wish) are immutable. Those ethics have been revealed to us via the Bible and our consciences. That's where my ethics originate. (That doesn't mean or imply my execution of them is perfect.)

Call it deo-ethics, if you will, but it doesn't fall into virtue-based ethics (as defined by the Wikipedia article, if you want another definition, please provide it).

<comment><USER14> Virtue ethics and consequentialism form a one-dimensional spectrum; all ethical beliefs exist at some point along it (not to imply that ethical beliefs don't have other dimensions—just that this is one of them.)

Pure virtue ethics mean, basically, "I am doing things for reasons." Even if the the reasons don't help you to get what you want, they're still your beliefs. Pure consequentialist ethics is the classic "the ends justify the means"; that it is the results that are important, and any reason you believe is simply a proxy that increases your likelihood of obtaining the result.

Whether a system of ethics is deontologically derived is orthogonal to this: you can take your beliefs from God as an a-priori fact about yourself (like in Descartes' argument for the existence of God), and therefore have them be virtue-based; or you can act so that god will reward you, or won't punish you, or so that your peer-group of religious people will identify with you, etc.

 _Morality_ , in the classic definition, refers to an objectively-true ethics—e.g., one where people who don't believe those ethics are _wrong_ for doing so. As far as I am aware, there is no modern religion that actually still supports moral, rather than ethical reasoning, at least when it comes to prescribing the actions of others, rather than our own internal deisions. This is what "tolerance" truly means: the sacrifice of a belief in the existence of objective morality for the consequence of cultural co-operation and empathy.

Of course, there is another, more modern definition of morality, which people think of as "personal morality"—the way you believe the world should be, whether or not anyone else believes it. Rather than overloading the word like that, it's easier to just use a piece of economics jargon to refer to this: this is your _utility function_ (a combination of what could be called "conscience" and what could also be called "desire"—it is simply the part of your mind that tells you whether or not a given thing is "good", for any definition of the term.)

One of the most useful things to come into a discussion with is a set of clearly-defined terms; they're like sharp chisels for chipping off useless argument and getting to the point where you can say something that's provably true. :)

<comment><USER15> > One of the most useful things to come into a discussion with is a set of > clearly-defined terms

Agreed. And it is why in part I dislike talking about philosophy or religion with most people, especially in a live face-to-face exchange. Because most of the problem is going to be from having each person use a different definition for each important word being tossed around (love, hate, good, evil, "God", free will, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Quora's staff started off answering as many questions as they could. This helped create a site that had activity on it, which encouraged other users to participate. Suddenly, they didn't have to spend hours answering questions themselves."

This reminds me of something one of the speakers (I'm pretty sure it was Quora's founder) said at Startup School - It's OK to do something that doesn't scale if it strengthens your position.

<comment><USER17> Quora also has a pernicious design feature in that the question asker is publicly anonymous but the answerer(s) are strongly identified and bound to their real names.

I _strongly_ suspect that nearly all of the startup-related questions are slow-pitch setups, asked by their answerer.

Even StackOverflow's QA mechanics aren't _that_ degenerate!

<comment><USER18> Actually, both the question asker and answerer can choose to be anonymous.

As far as I know though, you cannot ask anonymously and then answer the same question publicly.

Also, note that you _cannot_ comment on questions and answers if you are anonymous (unless you are the person who originally asked the question or its your anonymous answer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting. To me, the solutions you mention run a gamut of grey-hattedness: I'd call social hacks like the invite-only method perfectly white-hat, while outright inflation of current user numbers seems a bit shady (I'd either just automatically omit the display below a certain threshold or use a wider time range, such as the past 24 hours). Either way, these encourage some useful thought processes.

<comment><USER20> I received a piece of advice from a businessman once: All businesses start in the grey. Is that a good thing? Not really. Is that a bad thing? Well... not necessarily.

<comment><USER21> This seems like a piece of advice that sacrifices truthfulness for wit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> On WPQuestions.com, we corralled our friends and gave them the money to ask some of the first questions. In fact, of the first 10 questions on the site, I think 6 were from friends of ours. All the same, during the first few hours we were open, we did get one question from a total stranger, and by the end of the day we had revenue of something like $5, which allowed us to joke that we had made more money on our first day than Twitter had made during its first 2 years. And now that we are rolling our software out for others to use, I've been giving the same advice to the people on our waiting list: be ready to line up the first few transactions yourself, because the first few are the toughest. You need to create the momentum yourself. WPQuestions.com has now had 606 paid questions, and we haven't needed to force our friends to post questions since the first week, many months ago. But I think it was essential that we put some friends up to it that first week. Mind you, this wasn't totally faking it, since most of the questions were real questions that our friends were struggling with.

One thing I still do (I did it just this morning in fact) is increase the prize for a customer, when that customer has had a problem with the site, and we pay for the increase out of our own pocket. For instance, just today, I added to the prize for this question: <http://www.wpquestions.com/question/show/id/1160> . But I do not regard that as faking it, I simply regard that as good customer support and good customer relations.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this fundamentally different from lying to investors and telling them that you have more traction than you do, or even altering your financials? Yes, that would be illegal and telling users you have more users than you do probably isn't, I'm not sure they're that different ethically.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm always amused finding new iPhone apps with four 5-star reviews submitted the day the app was released, always sounding like an infomercial. Gotta say I've been tempted to seed some reviews and five stars (especially to try and bury others that are mistaken or just lying) but it's never happened.

I have created a mobile product with hundreds, maybe thousands of happy users. When I finally get to adding the social aspect of it there will be no need for faking it. I'm really anxious to get on to that phase, if anyone wants to help out let me know.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you are at a restaurant that just opened, you would find that they are extra nice to you. I would expect a startup to do the same, be extra nice to your early customers. I disagree that faking, or lying is the answer.

</comment><comment><USER25> It seems that most successful "chicken-and-egg" sites, sites that depend on a reasonably-sized userbase before anyone would want to use it, only achieved success through astroturfing (creating fake accounts and pretending like you're someone else).

Personally I find such activity deceptive and immoral, though I don't think it's particularly grievous. Does anyone know how to start a site that depends on a significant userbase without a huge amount of astroturfing? I'd imagine the only way is to either have a lot of really good friends who will help you, pay a bunch of people to use the site until the real userbase gets large enough, or advertise very aggressively so that lots of people are using it right away.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yelp started by paying users to leave reviews and got a serious backlash for doing this.

The nature of the "items" being displayed/created also plays a major role in this, because unless you own a few dozens cars, starting a _classified ads site for cars_ with only yours, is not going to get you far.

Several dating sites got in troubles for adding fake accounts with attractive pictures to lure people to sign up for their paid service. That is a line you do not want to cross…

</comment><comment><USER27> I want to find out whose company name was redacted from the post.

</comment><comment><USER28> I liken this to when you try to get a group of friends to do anything. For the sake of argument, let's say go to the movies or to a bar. If you have go to friends, you can seed your group there, but what after that? Almost everyone says, "a bunch of people are doing..." and it's kind of a lie because they don't know if people will go, they're saying that so other people will want to go. And this technique works wonders.

I don't have a problem with people applying this technique to their business, pretty much everyone does. The problem is you need to be careful with it because at the end of the day, it's still a lie and you still need to make money.

</comment><comment><USER29> The best graphic designers listen to the nerds, the sales team, the CEOs, the VPs, and every stake-holder in between. They design a "look" that pleases the CEO, who sells it to the board, who tells the VPs to implement it, who tell the sales team to accept it, who tell the nerds to build it.

The best designers are not prima donnas who force their ideas on the company. They build the design the big guy wants, takes the check, and waits for the VPs to call him back to make changes.

</comment><comment><USER30> Another option: pre-fill some content with some FB or Twitter content.

Then you have "users".

Whenever a user's "front' page is visited, increase that user's counter, and then display popular users on the main page.

Sure, you don't have true "true active" users, but at least it's users that generate some activity, indirectly.

If some users become popular, chances are they'll want to have a look at your service.

This might be a very bad idea, your call.

</comment><comment><USER31> And when will you stop taking short cuts? If you do stop, will you find out that your business wasn't truly viable? So will you continue taking the short cut, even then?

</comment><comment><USER13> Another brilliant post, keep up the good work.

I think many startups fail _because_ they don't fake it until they can make it. (I've been on that end a couple times myself.)

</comment><comment><USER32> you gotta fake it till you make it, otherwise you are just shooting yourself in the foot.

Being big is validation for most people, they figure if you got big, then you must have something to offer, and at the very least you won't scam them.

This is especially true for communities, since noone wants to be the first one there.

</comment><comment><USER33> I would say using faking is little harsh. All you are doing is providing seed data.

<comment><USER34> > [REDACTED] takes their real-time user numbers and multiplies them by a > randomly generated number. Whereas before, it would say "6 users online," it > would say "68 users online."

This sounds pretty much like faking, maybe even cheating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I would personally caution against the championing, if not the individual embracing of such an idea. This looks like a 'race to the bottom' to me.

Consider what happens in the long run. Sooner or later people will either catch on or get used to a website always having users or content, no matter how new or actually fake it is.

Some or all of these things may happen:

1\. Online communications between 'people,' real or fake, becomes devalued. They are already devalued with the flood of people with bad taste. Of course, one can argue that communication is value in itself; the feeling of connecting. In that case I have a great startup idea; one that makes you talk with chat bots but feels like actually conversing. If you use sophisticated enough text generation techniques and market it to stupid/desperate enough people I seriously think this could work to some extent.

2\. You will have to work extra, putting in fake content, just to launch a socially-oriented website. Otherwise it will not get off the ground. I await the day until a website has to send me flowers through the mail in order to grab my attention. Perhaps this is a good thing, because there are already more than enough socially-oriented websites.

But what can we do about it now?

One can take the view that this was a great blog post. Not only because it has named startups that use this approach, so the more principled of us have extra data on which kind of people are honest enough to do business with, but people of varying degrees of honesty have come out in the comments section, some virtually boasting of their 'faking it' techniques. We now have more data; you may now do as you wish with it.

Reflect on the business culture and environment that requires this sort of behavior and make a decision; is this the kind of thing I want to associate myself with?</comment>


Ask HN: Know of any non-digital toys/games that teach, for 6-10 year olds? - <AUTHOR> Teach anything - math, literature, problem solving etc. As long as it isn't digital. Something like card games, board games, simple DIY toys etc? <comment><USER2> I think the best gift for kids is still Legos. I spent hours building miniature cities, vehicles, homes, train systems, etc. as a kid. My children love them too. It's a great way to develop imagination and motor skills. I would personally avoid the branded sets, although that may just be my bias.

<comment><USER3> Lego taught me many things including how and why to plan ahead. Every child who grew up with Lego has experienced an off by one brick error. :)

<comment><USER4> Growing up, I wished I could design my lego projects ahead of time with an interface as simple as what Google SketchUp has ended up coming up with. I wanted to be able to model it and order the required parts with a single click. I think they might have something like that now but they didn't have it back then.

<comment><USER5> Yep, LDraw/LeoCAD.

[http://www.leocad.org/](http://www.leocad.org/)

[http://www.ldraw.org/](http://www.ldraw.org/)

<comment><USER6> There's also an official software (not necessarily better, of course): [http://ldd.lego.com/](http://ldd.lego.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a big fan of K'NEX [http://www.knex.com/knex- education](http://www.knex.com/knex-education)

<comment><USER8> +1 for K'NEX. Legos always seemed so limited to me as a kid. K'NEX is much more oriented towards actually _building_ things rather than just making neat things to look at.

<comment><USER9> Both are fun. Knex are better for things that move, Legos are better for pretending.

I transitioned from Lego to Knex once I got the Big Ball Factory at 11

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I commend you for wanting to teach children alternatives to digital. While binary & hexadecimal are popular, especially if you want to get them into the nuts & bolts of computers, I'd be interested to hear any reflections on duodecimal. I'm not too big a fan of this counting method: [https://mihaslekovec.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/duodecimal-...](https://mihaslekovec.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/duodecimal- hand.png) as it comes off as a bit too digitcentric for my tastes

Balanced ternary could be a real fun starting point-- getting negative numbers involved asap surely has some great benefits. I think if balanced ternary was exposed to children more often at an early age we'd have a lot of these new fangled type level numbers being balanced ternary. I was playing around with implementing such in Rust: [https://github.com/serprex/lambdaski/blob/master/src/typenum...](https://github.com/serprex/lambdaski/blob/master/src/typenum3.rs)

Binary comes off as particularly weak when type systems are still resolving lambda terms / prolog logic as associative maps & trees. [http://repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/topps/D-456.pdf](http://repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/topps/D-456.pdf) benchmarks 5 as being an ideal radix perfwise, but that does seem implementation dependent

My father wrote a song reflecting on our digital world: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw- au4sqKD2gWVJqOGFzSEVoakx...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw- au4sqKD2gWVJqOGFzSEVoakxPcGpoRTFQYVBqWWw2SlNv/view) Stay strong & good luck

<comment><USER11> I'm amused with how much you've amused yourself here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's an obvious one, but I think there's something to be said for a simple three-in-one chess, draughts and backgammon set. The upfront cost is small but the long term benefits are vast.

</comment><comment><USER13> Math Games

1) Prime Climb [https://www.amazon.com/Math-for-Love-Prime- Climb/dp/B00PG959...](https://www.amazon.com/Math-for-Love-Prime- Climb/dp/B00PG9590G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1502047067&sr=8-2&keywords=tiny+polka+dot+math+game)

2) Tiny Polka Dots [https://www.amazon.com/Math-For-Love-Tiny- Polka/dp/B01N1UUHP...](https://www.amazon.com/Math-For-Love-Tiny- Polka/dp/B01N1UUHP4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502047067&sr=8-1&keywords=tiny+polka+dot+math+game)

\- Tiny Polka Dots might seem too basic, but counting is this complex topic that we forget because, well, we know how to count. Lots of downstream advantages of having the kind of secure understanding a kid can get from understanding counting inside and out. Tiny Polka Dots can help.

<comment><USER14> More Maths Games

We have Qwirkle and City of Zombies in the classroom. I hate them :) mainly because I am rubbish at them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A kickstarted I supported is Turing Tumble, a simple Turing-complete mechanical computer. [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/871405126/turing- tumble...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/871405126/turing-tumble- gaming-on-a-mechanical-computer)

</comment><comment><USER16> Math: Skat[1] is an awesome card game with rules that fit on the back of a single card (basic version) and that trains addition and multiplication. AFAIK it is/was accepted as a teaching tool in Thuringia's schools. (usually for 3 players, a 2 player variation is described in the WP-article).

Literature: A membership in the local library was enough for me.

Problem Solving: Chess and related board games; any kind of puzzles - I loved metal puzzles where I had to separate/join pieces (e.g. those found here[2] - not endorsing the shop, just the first hit on DDG).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skat_(card_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skat_\(card_game\))

[2] [http://www.zoompuzzles.com/Metal- Puzzles_c_15-2.html](http://www.zoompuzzles.com/Metal-Puzzles_c_15-2.html)

</comment><comment><USER17>
      Tanagram
      Frisbee
      Bike
      Prism
      Magnifying glass

<comment><USER18> Reading this list as one item is incredibly confusing.

Tangrams are amazing, I would recommend presenting the silhouettes in varying sizes and at the other end of a room - makes it more fiendish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A musical instrument. I would suggest not teaching them the traditional way, but in a more natural way. Check out the approach of Victor Wooten [0]. If you want things a little more structured, try Improvise for Real [1]. Both will teach creativity, self expression and more. Plus its fun!

[0] [https://youtu.be/2zvjW9arAZ0](https://youtu.be/2zvjW9arAZ0) [1] www.improviseforreal.com

</comment><comment><USER20> I had this: [https://www.google.com/search?q=metal+constructor&tbm=isch&t...](https://www.google.com/search?q=metal+constructor&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiBqI6PpcPVAhWIA8AKHY2pBhYQ7AkIVQ&biw=1216&bih=1316#imgrc=JMxJ4S2oEIxRCM):

<comment><USER21> So did I! I'm not quite sure because it was a long time ago, but it was probably a Meccano set: [http://www.meccano.com/](http://www.meccano.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> there was a book getting started in electronics that use to be sold at radio shack. They had all sorts of basic projects from a battery using a potato to a transistor radio to an amplifier. I think it is still available online. I use to love making those projects when I was younger.

<comment><USER23> this one, which I assume you are referring to, is a classic. The one I had from the 80's had a green cover. [http://www.forrestmims.com](http://www.forrestmims.com)

<comment><USER22> I still have the green cover one, I am planning on letting my child have at it when she is old enough. Right now we are just doing the snap electronics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Board games like scrabble and boggle are great for spelling and vocabulary development. Try to get them to say the definitions for the words (at least a brief one) rather than accept that they know them. Play with a dictionary at hand. Also ask them the meaning of the words you play so it seems that getting at the definitions isn't meant to just criticize/challenge their plays (which it isn't, the purpose is to develop their understanding).

Card games like Rook, Spades, Cribbage (mentioned elsewhere), Casino are great for math and pattern matching, planning ahead. These just require a standard deck of playing cards, maybe two (habit from playing Bridge, have one deck in play and one shuffled and ready for the next hand).

24 Game was a good one for arithmetic (4 numbers, put any of +, -, *, / between them and try to get the result to be 24).

Mastermind is another good strategy, logic type game. It can also be played with pencil and paper which makes it a very fun one to teach kids so they can play it anywhere.

Dots and Boxes is a nice abstract strategy game to play on paper, which can serve as a good gateway to other abstract strategy games.

Guess Who was a good game of logical deduction. Shades of 20 Questions where you ask for features of the person and mark off people who don't qualify. Clue, of course, is strictly a game of logical deduction if you can get past the movement mechanics and all (always frustrated me to get low dice rolls and not have a chance to win even when I knew or was very close to the answer). From Clue, books of logic puzzles that practice deductive reasoning from a set of facts (along the lines of Einstein's puzzle).

Others mentioned RPGs, these can be good with kids. Particularly if you focus the emphasis on teamwork (discourage showboating and hogging the limelight), storytelling (goes back to vocabulary, but also thinking about complex situations), planning and strategy. You can incorporate lots of puzzles into the game that emphasize wordplay (riddles and such) or math (numeric puzzles) or logic (colors, connecting their actions with specific effects) or just general problem solving.

</comment><comment><USER15> Both my kids enjoyed Mastermind ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_(board_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_\(board_game\))) from a young age. Deductive logic game.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't know if you'd count this as "not digital" (it's mostly analog) but my kids have a blast with [http://www.snapcircuits.net/](http://www.snapcircuits.net/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Pencil & paper role playing games. If you view them as collaborative, improvised, slightly-structured, in-person storytelling, there's nothing like them for developing skills related to imagination, narration, language arts, cooperation, politics (seriously!), empathy, problem solving, and communication. They don't require exotic or expensive technology, can be played almost anywhere, help build meaningful social relationships, can be played by almost anyone, can be a lifelong hobby, and encourage learning about an enormous range of real world histories, ideas, technologies, literatures, skills, etc.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Robot Turtles. This game teaches kids 4+ the ins and outs of programming in a fun, tactile game."

[https://amzn.com/B00HN2BXUY](https://amzn.com/B00HN2BXUY) $21.89

(originally a Kickstarter)

</comment><comment><USER28> Model Rockets (designing, working out altitude, etc.)

Ship in a bottle

Woodworking projects (especially involving measuring, proportion, etc.)

Journaling

I Hate Mathematics Book by Marilyn Burns

Stolen Sharpie Revolution by Alex Wrekk (and other books on creating Zines)

Problem solving/lateral thinking books.

<comment><USER28> Also books about the way things work - maybe also books on inventions.

I would have suggested Make Magazine but its a lot of digital now. Instructables book is good though.

Old (70s and earlier) popular mechanics popular sciene and science and mechanics magazines. Older Scientific American magazines too

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Most board games can be great educational tools. Eg Guess Who teaches logical thinking skills since kids have to think of a strategy to use and a question that will support that strategy. Clue is similar but possibly a higher age range.

Same goes for puzzle games - Sudoku, or even those little golf tee + peg board games you see at like cracker barrel. Simple but educational and they exercise the brain.

As others have said, Legos and similar toys teach spatial reasoning and similar skills as well.

If you are looking for toys that teach a specific skill (eg algebra) that is likely trickier to find.

</comment><comment><USER30> Have them try sports. Don't force them, but try a few and see if any stick. It's a huge social advantage for the rest of their lives both as something to do and something to talk about.

</comment><comment><USER31> Meta-Forms teaches problem solving. You have to guess the arrangement of objects in a 3 by 3 grid based on clues such as two circles are next to each other, and no red objects are next to each other. [https://smile.amazon.com/FoxMind-5512646-Metaforms- Games/dp/...](https://smile.amazon.com/FoxMind-5512646-Metaforms- Games/dp/B0015MC2TO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502058102&sr=8-1&keywords=metaforms)

</comment><comment><USER32> For DIY toys, check out Arvind Gupta's toys from trash: [http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/toys.html](http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/toys.html)

A compelling way to introduce children to laws of nature. You can see him sharing his philosophy here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOllmFfELT8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOllmFfELT8)

</comment><comment><USER33> For problem solving / strategy (and fun of course!) Marble run, Geomag, Monopoly, Canasta (2 or 4 player)

Also the games by thinkfun.com (Rush Hour etc) are very good

</comment><comment><USER34> When I was 6 or 7, my Grandma taught me how to play cribbage. At first, it was a little tough, so my Grandma helped me decide which cards to put into my crib and with counting out my hand. But as my ability to add and spot patterns increased, I stopped needing her help so much.

Cribbage is a nice blend of strategy, applied math and pattern matching. I plan to teach my 17 month old daughter cribbage as soon as I can.

</comment><comment> a-saleh I would really recommend MERCUR, I am just not sure where would you be able to get it. Where I come from (i.e. Czech Republic), it is this legendary engineering toy kit, and you could build almost anything with it :)

As kids we loved it, and then, even in college we still used it in our robotics projects :)

[http://eshop.merkurtoys.cz/](http://eshop.merkurtoys.cz/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Books?

<comment><USER36> I was also going to say books. You could get books that aren't novels. For example, a book on how to do magic tricks, or a book about how the world works (e.g. earth science), or a book about different type of bridges, etc etc.

<comment><USER37> Not to discard novels either though. If they can encourage book reading they also fill a purpose!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> magnatiles (amazon have seen at target) one of our kids favorites, great for 6 year old but they will play with them for years. [https://www.amazon.com/Magna-Tiles-Clear- Colors-100-Piece/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Magna-Tiles-Clear- Colors-100-Piece/dp/B000CBSNRY/)

Kapla Blocks (building) [https://www.amazon.com/CitiBlocs-200-Piece-Natural- Colored-B...](https://www.amazon.com/CitiBlocs-200-Piece-Natural-Colored- Building-Blocks/dp/B003BWVJ72)

Dominos for Toppling (lots of tutorials online to do amazing runs) [https://bulkdominoes.com/collections/all](https://bulkdominoes.com/collections/all)

Wooden Blocks [https://www.amazon.com/ECR4Kids-Hardwood-Building- Storage-48...](https://www.amazon.com/ECR4Kids-Hardwood-Building- Storage-48-Piece/dp/B00777UEL4/)

If you don't have a hard smooth floor pick up a sheet of plexiglass for dominos and kapala blocks.

Legos, get a variety of sets, encourage mixing and building your own creations.

Board Games

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

Catan Junior Settlers of Catan

Ticket to Ride

Blockus

Scrabble (deluxe with plastic grid)

Chess

Stratego (Original General is 1)

Uno Card Game.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

Snap Circuits (Electricity Projects)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

Do science night where parents use a white board to teach how things work, let them ask questions/explain things they know.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

Lego Mindstorms is good too, but they would need to be on a screen some for this.

</comment><comment><USER39> My parents used Brain Quest cards with me and I loved them. Kept me happy on road trips and at restaurants.

</comment><comment><USER40> Boardgames are a great way to teach. There are so many to choose from now. Also there is nothing better than spending time with your kids. [https://boardgamegeek.com/](https://boardgamegeek.com/)

<comment><USER41> Some people may not realize that boardgamegeek has ridiculously granular search capabilities- For instance, here are all recommended board games with a minimum recommended age of 6 sorted by rating: [https://boardgamegeek.com/search/boardgame?sort=rank&advsear...](https://boardgamegeek.com/search/boardgame?sort=rank&advsearch=1&q=&include%5Bdesignerid%5D=&include%5Bpublisherid%5D=&geekitemname=&range%5Byearpublished%5D%5Bmin%5D=&range%5Byearpublished%5D%5Bmax%5D=&range%5Bminage%5D%5Bmax%5D=6&range%5Bnumvoters%5D%5Bmin%5D=&range%5Bnumweights%5D%5Bmin%5D=&range%5Bminplayers%5D%5Bmax%5D=&range%5Bmaxplayers%5D%5Bmin%5D=&range%5Bleastplaytime%5D%5Bmin%5D=&range%5Bplaytime%5D%5Bmax%5D=&floatrange%5Bavgrating%5D%5Bmin%5D=&floatrange%5Bavgrating%5D%5Bmax%5D=&floatrange%5Bavgweight%5D%5Bmin%5D=&floatrange%5Bavgweight%5D%5Bmax%5D=&colfiltertype=&searchuser=&playerrangetype=normal&B1=Submit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> There is this brilliant card game Set ([https://www.setgame.com/set](https://www.setgame.com/set)), which is a load of fun and also teaches visual reasoning skills.

<comment><USER43> The one thing I've never personally enjoyed about Set is that it's a "how fast can you do it" game that promotes quick thinking over other skills. My wife loves it, though, and I do agree it's a great game to teach patterns and set matching.

<comment><USER44> I totally understand where you're coming from with it emphasizing quick thinking. Unfortunately, that's part of the game and it can't be taken away. Even so, I love that game, I credit it with helping to stoke my interest in patterns and logic at an early age (love you mom!). Not necessarily related but Tangrams is another (math related imo) activity, a tiling puzzle that exercises spatial thinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Math rods / Cuisenaire rods: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Viga-Wooden-Maths-Rods- Cuisenaire/d...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Viga-Wooden-Maths-Rods- Cuisenaire/dp/B014J0RJVE/)

A Pound of dice: [https://www.amazon.com/Wiz-Dice-Pack-Random- Polyhedral/dp/B0...](https://www.amazon.com/Wiz-Dice-Pack-Random- Polyhedral/dp/B01KN7REWQ/) (I'd be keen to know if there's dice at a similar price in the UK)

You can then play something like Button Men (which could easily be rethemed to "Pokemon battle") [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button_Men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button_Men)

</comment><comment><USER46> Scrabble is great for vocabulary, although as you get better you'll learn strategic words and probably disregard their meaning (for example, I frequently use qi, qat, suq, qua but I can't define them)

<comment><USER47> House rules: if you don't know what a word means you can't use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Not sure if it will fit your age range but this company has a lot of good teaching toys/things:

[http://www.melissaanddoug.com/](http://www.melissaanddoug.com/)

<comment><USER49> I listened to a podcast from these founders. I don't have kids to buy their products but I would buy from them based on the 1 hour show I listened to

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> RPG? Something like Herokids [http://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/106605](http://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/106605)

</comment><comment><USER51> chemistry set, microscope, bicycles, roller skates, balls, play doh, legos, books, magnifying glass, compass, etc.

Pretty much anything you throw at them will teach them something.

The question is, what do you want them to learn?

</comment><comment><USER30> Lego, erector set, chess, backgammon, othello/reversi, card games are all things I remeber from my pre-technology childhood.

Reading of course.

</comment><comment><USER52> bicycles teach you a great deal.

</comment><comment><USER53> Lego, Magic the Gathering, European board games, and playing a musical instrument

</comment><comment><USER54> Poker for probability and a little bit of psychology.

</comment><comment><USER55> Standard cards deck. Solitaire, card tricks.

</comment><comment><USER56> Kapla (wood blocks)

</comment><comment><USER57> Rubik's cubes?

</comment><comment><USER58> MECCANO ( [http://www.meccano.com/](http://www.meccano.com/) )

6 might be a bit on the younger side for it, but 10 definitely not. You learn to use a screwdriver and screws and basic mechanics. You can go all the way to elaborate designs.

It's a timeless toy, my father already played with it (looked like this back then: [http://www.dalefield.com/nzfmm/slap/RoyalMeccano.JPG](http://www.dalefield.com/nzfmm/slap/RoyalMeccano.JPG) ) and so did I. Heck, even an adult can use these, I once made a distillery platform with height-adjustable burner with these. Really nice to slap together sturdy prototypes.

EDIT: Now that I'm looking at modern MECCANO, I feel like they have diverted too much from the original path. I'd rather have the basic old metal kit in the second image than a fancy MECCANO car consisting of oddly shaped plastic pieces.

<comment><USER18> My parents got me some MECCANO over a decade ago and were most annoyed that it didn't have enough 'normal' pieces for me to build other things with it. As such I built the car and thats that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Give them a bunch of tools - hammer, saw, screwdriver, ruler, pencil, hand- powered drill, pair of pliers - and some scrap material (left-over planks, some thin sheet material, some small nails and screws, etc) to work on. Add a bottle of wood glue and some paint, preferably left-overs from other paint jobs to make them feel more at ease at wasting some and appreciate the fact that things don't have to be brand-spanking new to be useful. Help them along a bit but don't get in the way. They might make swords, bows, arrows, cars, horse stables, houses, whatever fits their fancy. The results might not be perfect but they're the work of their own hands and minds.

Yes, a 6yo can learn to use a saw, just make sure it is sized accordingly and has small teeth - both because they are easier to use as well as less likely to cause injury.

<comment><USER60> Even younger :)

We had some aerated concrete brick left after rebuilding our bathroom and my son (4yo at the time) "crafted" them with tools like saw or nails and screws. He really enjoyed that.

It stressed a lot his grandfather, to see his grandson with sharp tools, but the boy was very proud of his work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> No suggestions unfortunately, but I'm curious to know the motivation behind trying to find non-digital toys. Is there something we could do to bring the benefits of non-digital toys into digital ones or are the differences fundamentally irreconcilable?

<comment><USER49> Fundamentally irreconcilable. Staring at a screen is only so helpful when you're under the age of 15</comment></comment>


We hear you: updates to Works with Nest - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/products/google-nest/updates-works-with-nest/ <comment><USER2> It somewhat sounds like large companies are now just saying "we'll retire this ..." and then wait for the community and customers to give them arguments for why this is a bad idea.

It's cheaper than thinking it through yourself and if "customer engagement" is one of your KPIs, you're going to have a good month ;)</comment>


Any lucid dreamers in here? - <AUTHOR>

Want to try LD and have been journaling. but I might stop after reading this. Is it BS?
http://bit.ly/1D5spvr <comment><USER2> I have lucid dreams occasionally. I have never attempted to control the process or force it to happen, it just happens. Oddly, I usually realize that I am dreaming when I attempt to control an aspect of my dream, and I just can't visualize what I want, for some reason.

<comment><USER3> What's that like to accidentally lucid dream? Can't imagine that's pleasant.

<comment><USER2> Invariably unpleasant, for me anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Seems legit actually, but a little scary.</comment>


How Postgres Makes Transactions Atomic - <AUTHOR> https://brandur.org/postgres-atomicity <comment><USER2> Author here with just a quick note that writing this was a pretty great learning experience. Postgres has always been the ultimate black box — it does some amazing things, but I generally have no idea how.

I read a lot of Postgres code to get this finished, and I'm happy to say that for a codebase with so many authors, the quality of Postgres' is very high. Like any complex program it can be a little hard to trace through, but most of the naming is pretty self-explanatory, and it comes with some really amazing comments that walk you through the high-level design. I'd definitely recommend taking a look if anyone is curious.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the writeup, it's at the necessary level of depth to convey the important concepts. I didn't have time to read through all of it yet, so maybe this is addressed, but there has always been something about transactions that I don't understand. How do they accomplish queries that rely on indices within a transaction? If they're not keeping a copy of the index for that transaction, but you wanted to do a sorted query that may or may not include some of your newly inserted rows prior to committing, do they simply do the query without the use of indexes? Do they do the query with indexes to create a temporary table, then run it again non-indexed on the temporary table including your new records? It would seem like that would have many edge cases to address.

<comment><USER4> Not OP, but I think the answer is that PostgreSQL updates the the index right away, which points to the heap tuple (and it's visibility information). This index value can already be accessed by concurrent transactions, but they decide if its visible or not by looking at the xmin/xmax of the heap tuple it belongs to. If the transaction is rolled back, it's up to VACUUM to remove both the dead heap tuple, as well as its index tuples.

AFAIK there are also optimizations that allow queries to avoid having to look up the individual heap tuples for visibility information by marking the entire page on the index as visible (useful for index-only scans). Yet other optimizations exist to not require updating indexes when updating existing rows where none of the indexed columns change (HOT).

Maybe somebody with a more in-depth understanding can comment, but hopefully the above is somewhat correct :).

<comment><USER5> That is correct.

There is one small inaccuracy in your summary, which is that a structure called the visibility map summarizes if a heap page is all visible; that's how index only scans work. At no point do we mark an index page as all-visible, because a HOT update would invalidate that.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the clarification about the visibility map.

That being said, I don't understand why HOT would interfere with a hypothetical mechanism for marking index pages as all-visible. If a tuple gets a HOT update, I think the index values should remaing unchanged? And if they do, shouldn't their visibility on an all-visible index page remain unchanged as well?

Unrelated: Thank you so much for your work on "UPSERT" :)

<comment><USER5> I guess that I said HOT UPDATE because you talked about HOT. What you describe goes against how visibility information is maintained. There is an interlock between indexes and tables for VACUUM that would have to be considered. It would be hard to set an all-visible bit on a leaf page in a race-free manner.

A much simpler way of putting it would be that deletes would have to touch indexes if summarized visibility info was stored in indexes, even in cases where overall there is hardly any benefit from putting per-page visibility information in index pages. It's not impossible to make something like this work, but it's not obviously compatible with the current design.

I'm glad that you found UPSERT useful.

<comment><USER4> I wasn't really proposing to change how visibility information is maintained, my grasp on the internals is far to weak for that :). I just tried to make sure I understood your comment, which I think I do now. So thanks again for another insightful reply :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > [https://brandur.org/assets/postgres-atomicity/heap-tuple- > vis...](https://brandur.org/assets/postgres-atomicity/heap-tuple- > visibility.svg)

These diagrams are really beautiful, I love the subtle separation in the lines showing that they're made of hypens. Is there some software that makes these easy to generate?

<comment><USER7> I don't know if this is what the author used but I use Monodraw[0] to make diagrams like this.

[0] [https://monodraw.helftone.com/](https://monodraw.helftone.com/)

<comment><USER8> I had the same question and dug around in the repo to find out. It is indeed Monodraw:

[https://github.com/brandur/sorg/tree/master/content/raws/pos...](https://github.com/brandur/sorg/tree/master/content/raws/postgres- atomicity)

I'm excited to use this tool.

<comment><USER9> I wish I could use it on Linux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is precisely the kind of article I hope for when I browse the front page.

Thank you for all the effort you put into writing this. It is clearly the product of a lot of effort and craft.

</comment><comment><USER11> As a beginner in the software engineering realm, I cannot thank people who give these kind of write-ups enough. It helps me explore patterns and beautiful pieces of engineering. On a side note I wonder if the functions are really named like that or did the author rename some for clarity?

<comment><USER12> Postgres has a super readable codebase and the functions in the article seem to come directly from the code. When you understand the general model of how postgres works it's fairly easy to browse the code. Having said that I haven't look at the deeper structures at all before and have mostly just perused the query planner / executor code.

We were looking through it earlier to see why our nested loop nodes where performing badly — which ultimately made us realise we were just misreading the EXPLAIN output :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thank you for the article, but I do have one quibble:

      > We could ensure that any process takes out an exclusive lock
      > on a file before reading or writing it, or we could push all
      > operations through a single flow control point so that they
      > only run one at a time. Not only are these workarounds slow,
      > but they won't scale up to allow us to make our database fully
      > ACID-compliant

As much as I like Postgres, I also like SQLite, which uses a simple file lock and yet is utterly acidic ([https://www.sqlite.org/transactional.html](https://www.sqlite.org/transactional.html)). From SQLite's FAQ:

      > SQLite allows multiple processes to have the database file
      > open at once, and for multiple processes to read the database
      > at once. When any process wants to write, it must lock the
      > entire database file for the duration of its update. But that
      > normally only takes a few milliseconds. . . .
      >
      > If your application has a need for a lot of concurrency, then
      > you should consider using a client/server database. But
      > experience suggests that most applications need much less
      > concurrency than their designers imagine.

\--- [https://www.sqlite.org/faq.html#q5](https://www.sqlite.org/faq.html#q5)

<comment><USER4> AFAIK SQLite doesn't achieve atomicity by virtue of its global write lock. It does so by using a rollback journal (default) or WAL.

So it's not really all that different from PostgreSQL in that regard and the authors point remains valid :).

You might also enjoy this talk by the main author of SQLite: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvmMzI0X7fE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvmMzI0X7fE) (SQLite: Protégé of PostgreSQL)

<comment><USER13> The paragraph I quoted is talking about two things, one right after the other: concurrency and acidity.

First, it talks about concurrency. It says that a naive solution to concurrency is file locking. It says this is slow. So I first trot out SQLite as an example that is not slow.

It says, "Not only are these workarounds slow, but they won't scale up to allow us to make our database fully ACID-compliant." To me it sounded like he said choosing file-locking for concurrency will mop you into a corner, that you won't ever become ACID, regardless of what you tack on, like a journal.

One other clarification about concurrency: SQLite says it's fast enough for most websites. Then it turns around and says that if you need a lot of concurrency, you should go with another database. The contradiction evaporated when it dawned on me that when database makers say "concurrency," they're talking about many users at a time connecting to a database directly: picture a bunch of SQL gurus connecting directly to an SQLite file and issuing raw SQL statements. Or replace the gurus with several "application" servers that all write to a database on yet another server. For that, SQLite would be bad, we all agree, including SQLite.

But that's not what most of us, the 99% of app developers, are thinking of when we hear "concurrency." We're thinking of several people hitting our website. In that case, SQLite would still hold up ([https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html](https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html), see _Server-side database_ ).

Anyway, again, I'm not against Postgres. It's what I use. I'm not talking about SQLite because I'm invested in it but because I admire it. It's just an example of a simple solution that meets many people's needs, without resorting to more complexity.

<comment><USER14> > But that's not what most of us, the 99% of app developers, are thinking of > when we hear "concurrency." We're thinking of several people hitting our > website. In that case, SQLite would still hold up > ([https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html](https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html), see > Server-side database).

It doesn't. At all.

The quassel project supports PostgreSQL and SQLite as backends.

And, as expected when you use a database as log storage for an IRC bouncer, you end up with many concurrent threads writing and reading to the same table.

The result is that if a user is reading a table right now, no one can write to it - and that, in turn, means that the thread receiving messages ( _and responding to PINGs, which is required to keep the connection to the IRC server alive!_ ) gets blocked, and has to wait on the threads currently requesting messages.

So if you connect and set your client to, on connection to the bouncer, request the last 500 messages for each channel, you might actually time out. Yes. When you have enough data, then connecting to the bouncer can kill the bouncers other connections.

If you have more than one thread doing writes or reads – in a usual web application you'll have dozens or hundreds of worker threads reading and writing concurrently – then SQLite just isn't useful.

Disclaimer: Not speaking for the quassel project here. This comment is just my opinion.

<comment><USER13>
      > if a user is reading a table right now,
      > no one can write to it

In 2010 SQLite came out with a mode that keeps the writer from blocking readers: [https://www.sqlite.org/wal.html](https://www.sqlite.org/wal.html)

      > > 99% [...] SQLite would still hold up
      > an IRC bouncer

I would consider a chat client one of the 1%. Although there are many chat clients, and other examples that we could think of, there are thousands of websites and apps of the "small to medium" size that SQLite might be a good fit for.

[https://www.sqlite.org/features.html](https://www.sqlite.org/features.html)

<comment><USER14> > I would consider a chat client one of the 1%. Although there are many chat > clients, and other examples that we could think of, there are thousands of > websites and apps of the "small to medium" size that SQLite might be a good > fit for.

The issue with those is still that if you have a too high writing load, SQLite will become a bad fit. It's perfect for any low writing, high read situations, as many websites are, but for more dynamic applications it seems to be less usable.

Also, the FAQ of SQLite still lists

> SQLite supports an unlimited number of simultaneous readers, but it will > only allow one writer at any instant in time. For many situations, this is > not a problem. Writer queue up. Each application does its database work > quickly and moves on, and no lock lasts for more than a few dozen > milliseconds. But there are some applications that require more concurrency, > and those applications may need to seek a different solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Postgres is entirely designed around the idea of durability, which dictates that even in extreme events like a crash or power loss, committed transactions should stay committed._

Although if I had a $100 for every time I've had DB corruption in Postgres over the years...

That being said, since 9.4 (or maybe 9.5) these incidents have mostly stopped happening and it's been remarkably stable.

<comment><USER16> Hi, very curious under what situations you had data corruption. I use postgres a lot and haven't experienced (or noticed) this. I'm wondering if I'm using it differently than you or if I've been lucky =]

<comment><USER15> Most of our cases have been standby servers having corrupted WAL files, to be discovered only when the master has had a physical disk crash or similar.

After a few tough lessons like that we've put monitoring in place for ensuring that the standby and/or PITR servers have testing in place e.g. PITR servers must have uninterrupted WAL sequences.

Most Postgres corruption (on a master) actually happens due to dodgy hardware, but we don't really use bad hardware. In cases where we used VM's we've suspected something fishy in VMWare itself. In one case we suspected the SAN that the VMWare host was using.

So mostly not Postgres' fault. There were however some known replication bugs in the 9.x versions that were quite nasty. I think those bugs have now all or mostly been fixed, so 9.6 and 10 (beta) onwards are extremely stable.

But the risk of HW issues still remain as the biggest reason for postgres corruption.

I cannot emphasize enough how important backups are (both standby servers and PITR) and also to verify that these are indeed valid for that day when you're going to need to use them.

<comment><USER16> Great response, thank you. Seems mostly replication-related, which admittedly I haven't delved into much. I've used postgres to hold a lot of data, but haven't gotten to the point where it needed to scale out yet. This is great to know for when that starts to be a concern. I'll definitely heed your advice on backups (already do them, but could put more automation into verifying they work).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Every transaction in the database is applied in serial order, with a global lock ensuring that only one is being confirmed committed or aborted at a time." Is this true? I assumed you could transact in parallel, if there was no conflict, e.g. different tables were involved or maybe even different rows.

<comment><USER18> The confirmation for non-conflicting transaction is a very fast operation, it's not a bottleneck to protect it with a global lock. The whole process of writing the transaction is in parallel, you just have written data that might be discarded if the final commit fails. I don't think you can tell that two transactions do not conflict without holding a lock on the global state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Those diagrams are badass! Anyone knows what was used to make em?

<comment><USER20> Not OP, but I like [https://monodraw.helftone.com/](https://monodraw.helftone.com/)

There are a few online variants, e.g. [http://asciiflow.com/](http://asciiflow.com/) and [https://textik.com/](https://textik.com/)

For extra credit use these fonts: [https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc- fonts/fontlist/](https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is a non problem IMO. Why would you ever need to write the same data from two different sources simultaneously? What is the user case?

</comment><comment><USER22> Wait, they're -not- atomic? This surprises me because of the number of comparisons between MySql and Postgres... Comparing apples to oranges

<comment><USER23> You misread the title and didn't see the "How" (I did as well).

<comment><USER22> Yep! I did, ooops

<comment><USER22> Ok Everyone, I realized my mistake, no need to keep downvoting, sheesh

<comment><USER14> This is why sometimes the ability to edit a comment later on (and if it would only be additive editing) would be useful, to correct mistakes made.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Terrestrial Planets Across Space and Time - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.00690 <comment><USER2> This study states (corrections if I am wrong) that there are plus or minus 80-billion-billion or 14-thousand-billion-billion terrestrial planets (similar to earth) orbiting around a sun with a friendly temperature that is an average age of 1.3 to 1.7-billion years-old.

The average galaxy they reside in has about twice the mass of the Milky Way and there are circling a sun just like the we are.

We need will a bigger James Webb telescope!</comment>


So I sold my first business and here's what I learned - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cnizz.com/2013/12/26/so-i-sold-my-first-business-and-heres-what-i-learned/

<comment><USER2> Good read - I'm actually putting together something with a partner so definitely agree on making sure the agreement has a buyout clause.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think "breaks" and "breaking" should be spelled "brakes" and "braking"

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would you recommend buying a web biz through Flippa?

<comment><AUTHOR> If the value is good, sure. I'll be looking to buy what I determine is an under-performing website from Flippa (or elsewhere) with a portion of the money I made on my sale.

<comment><USER4> "If the value is good, sure" Good point. I'm glad you brought that up A few questions: 1\. How can you tell if the revenue stats are valid? 2\. How do you determine "good value"?</comment></comment></comment>


Why F1 is help and F5 is refresh - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access#Description <comment><AUTHOR> I read a question in the windows 3.1 slack application thread: why F3 was exit, with a link to IBM CUA.

This historic reference does not answer why F3 exits, but it brings many other interesting things like copy paste and navigation between text fields and options.</comment>


Dear Google how is tracking my location not personally identifiable data? - <AUTHOR>

You know where I live and can track down where I go to work, where I go to school, where I go to shop. Anyone with access to that data can look up the address online to find the name of the person or persons who lives there, then use the rest of location data to narrow things down.<p>Either way I'm not "enemy of the state" so it does not bother me much, but data is personally identifiable. <comment><USER2> From a response they sent to the press:

 _Any location data that is sent back to Google location servers is anonymized and is not tied or traceable to a specific user._

It's anonymized. They technically aren't tracking your location but finding out where a 'place' is through the triangulation data of that area, which is sent to their servers so next time someone in that location queries their database - via an app for example - gets more accurate feedback.</comment>


Parameters of the Space Shuttle based on the size of a horse's ass. Not. - <AUTHOR> http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp

<comment><USER2> Before WW I and perhaps after, the Russian gauge differed from the western European, not least as an anti-invasion measure. Charles Babbage agitated to no effect for a broader gauge, by the way.</comment>


Ask HN: Best books on the psychology of religion? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I'm interested in learning more on the psychology of religion. Can anybody recommend any books on the subject, and why you recommend them?
Thanks.
edit: Upon second thought, I'm more interested in the psychology of virtue/morals. <comment><USER2> "The Righteous Mind" by Johnathan Haidt. Technically it's not just about religion, it's about the psychology of righteousness, but it's clearly related. My review of it: [https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/829796352](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/829796352)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! And now that I think about it, I'm looking less at the psychology of religion, but more so the psychology of virtue/morals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> C.S. Lewis' 'The problem of pain', and 'A grief Observed' I think is relevant, even if you are trying to avoid reading apologetics.

I would definitely consider reading Julian Jaynes' 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' in this context as well.

<comment><USER4> Another vote for Julian Jaynes. I'm aware his theories are contested, but they're very interesting and thought-provoking nonetheless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure if it counts as psychology of religion, but "Orthodoxy" by Gilbert Keith Chesterton is something not to be missed if you are looking for one of the finest works of christian philosophy in XX century.

some quotations here [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Orthodoxy_(book)](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Orthodoxy_\(book\)). Quotations from the chapter I, "Introduction in Defense of Everything Else", might be exactly what you are looking for.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm sure more experienced scholars will have more up-to-date recommendations, but William James 'Varieties of Religious Experience' is a classic.

</comment><comment><USER7> I say this was great humility, but unfortunately the majority of books recommended here are naive perspectives of religion—with the one exception being the recommendation of C.S. Lewis.

If you want to understand the psychology behind religion I recommend Wittgenstein's "Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough"; Eliade's "Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries" and "The Sacred & Profane"; Feuerbach's "The Essence of Religion"; Gertz's "The Religion of Java" and "The Interpretation of Cultures"; and no anthology of introduction to religion would be complete without Ricouer's "Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences".

An amazing excerpt from Eliade details the Tjilpa people orientating their small tribe around this sacred gum tree, until one day the tree breaks, the Tjilpa people then "wandered around aimlessly for a time, and finally [laid] down on the ground together and waited for death to overtake them".

<comment><USER8> Out of curiosity which one is the C.S. Lewis recommendation? Had a hard time Googling that.

<comment><USER9> Someone here recommended _The Problem of Pain_ and _A Grief Observed_ , and I would add _Mere Christianity_ and _The Four Loves_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Possibly the classic about this subject (" _' Varieties of Religious Experience' now stands as such a masterly investigation of the psychology of individual theologies, that his other works tend to be rather pushed to one side. _").

 _This is a study of the psychology of original religious experiences, not religious institutions. Religious geniuses have often shown nervous instability, such as George Fox or St Theresa. Medical materialism, sexual origins refuted. Perhaps the neurotic temperament is best to receive religious inspiration._

There is an abridged version in the Squashed Philosophers: [http://sqapo.com/james.htm](http://sqapo.com/james.htm)

I particularly like this sentence:

 _our morality appears as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but, alas! are not._

</comment><comment><USER11> The Science of Religion on EdX [1]

I have been interested in why humans believe in religion ever since watching this discussion[2]. This course is absolutely amazing and it even features content from individuals outside of religious studies, including Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt. Each video contains lectures or interviews from experts on each respective subject in the course. Talking about the building block theory of religion? The course features the lady who invented it. Talking about data science in religion? The course features the researcher in charge of the largest religious database in the world. I think this course is a model for how online courses ought to be. And yes, it absolutely gets into the psychology involved.

[1] [https://www.edx.org/course/science-religion-ubcx- religionx-0](https://www.edx.org/course/science-religion-ubcx-religionx-0) (youtube lectures: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNBQqqt7UnTQ8CuCbfwV4gA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNBQqqt7UnTQ8CuCbfwV4gA) )

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqCRwkak- TU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqCRwkak-TU)

P.S. this is an excerpt from my blog which is why it is written in a slightly different tone than I typically would use on HN.

</comment><comment><USER12> Maybe a bit less orthodox (no pun intended) than the rest of the recommendations, but Peter Hintjens in "Social Architecture" describes very well the differences between cults and groups of virtuous people. And more importantly, the mechanics of how you are more likely to join a cult in moments of weakness.

[https://g.co/kgs/S3NEdK](https://g.co/kgs/S3NEdK)

</comment><comment><USER13> Here are a few related materials on the psychology of moral development:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg's_stages_o...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development)

[http://cook-greuter.com/9%20levels%20of%20increasing%20embra...](http://cook- greuter.com/9%20levels%20of%20increasing%20embrace%20update%201%2007.pdf)

[https://vividness.live/2015/10/12/developing-ethical- social-...](https://vividness.live/2015/10/12/developing-ethical-social-and- cognitive-competence/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I never heard about Lawrence Kohlberg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hero of a Thousand Faces, [https://smile.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected- Joseph-Cam...](https://smile.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph- Campbell/dp/1577315936), is a great overview of mythology/morality across many times and cultures.

There is also a great interview with the author on Netflix now. It's from the 1980s, but it's several hours of great content as well.

</comment><comment><USER15> Freud's Civilisation & It's Discontent. It's not purely about religion/morals but he does touch on it from an interesting angle:

[https://www.amazon.com/Civilization-Its-Discontents- Sigmund-...](https://www.amazon.com/Civilization-Its-Discontents-Sigmund- Freud/dp/0393304515)

</comment><comment><USER16> I would suggest Food of the Gods by Terrence McKenna as it brings an interesting angle over religion related to our consciousness: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51660.Food_of_the_Gods](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51660.Food_of_the_Gods)

</comment><comment><USER17> Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell" is worth your time: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_the_Spell:_Religion...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_the_Spell:_Religion_as_a_Natural_Phenomenon)

</comment><comment><USER18> The Evolution of God by Robert Wright is a good read. I think it's important to understand morals/religion in historical context, and Wright does a great job of adding this context and how religion has developed over the centuries.

</comment><comment><USER19> Also I want to read Rene Girard someday - I believe he talks about this as well.

</comment><comment><USER20> Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling" and "Either/Or"are hard slogs, but worth it, if you like thinking about essential paradoxes, psychological responses to existentialism, and the like.

<comment><USER21> I've never found Kierkegaard to be a hard slog. I've long enjoyed his writings.

<comment><USER20> More than most, he suffers from the penalty of "it's old so it has to be Super Serious And Stuffy", which is kind of a shame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Plus one for The Righteous Mind, mentioned below.

Also in the vein of 'not quite psychology of religion, but related', The Hero's Journey, by Joseph Campbell.

</comment><comment><USER23> Freud "Moses And Monotheism" [https://archive.org/stream/mosesandmonothei032233mbp/mosesan...](https://archive.org/stream/mosesandmonothei032233mbp/mosesandmonothei032233mbp_djvu.txt) It's about the evolutionary roots and the modern desire for a uber-father

</comment><comment><USER24> "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion" by Sam Harris: [http://a.co/d/bpQ6OlS](http://a.co/d/bpQ6OlS)

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins: [http://a.co/d/2aP5Tvo](http://a.co/d/2aP5Tvo)

"Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment" by Robert Wright: [http://a.co/d/8IawuEo](http://a.co/d/8IawuEo)

Sam Harris discusses these topics (amongst others you may find interesting) in conversations on his podcast: [https://samharris.org/podcast/](https://samharris.org/podcast/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Patrick McNamara - The neuroscience of religious experience

</comment><comment><USER26> try work done by maskeen. his work is on Sikhism in Punjabi language. philosophy on religion is opinionated.

</comment><comment><USER27> Aristotle's ethical treatises.

Also, his Rhetoric.

</comment><comment><USER28> Jordan Peterson is a psychology professor from Canada who has become a somewhat divisive/controversial political figure during the last 2 years, but he has been uploading video lectures about exactly these topics for a long time.

Jordan Peterson, The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQD_IZs7y60I...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQD_IZs7y60I3lUrrFTzkpat)

Jordan Peterson, 2017 Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (University of Toronto): [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQAT-0aSPq-O...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQAT-0aSPq- OKOpQlHyR4k5h)

</comment><comment><USER29> stefan zweig - mental healers

</comment><comment><USER30> "Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief" by Jordan Peterson

</comment><comment><USER31> Not a book but here are some recently published debates between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris that are moderated by Bret Weinstein:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-Z9EZE8kpo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-Z9EZE8kpo)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtkwF5qA6uE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtkwF5qA6uE)

I haven't gotten around to watching them yet (4.5 hours total) but they're supposed to be pretty interesting. The topic of the debate, as I understand it, is roughly whether religion or religious beliefs have any utility from an evolutionary/fitness perspective and/or to what degree could/should we try to objectively evaluate religious/ethical beliefs. Peterson is a clinical psychologist so he's coming to the debate from that angle.

<comment><USER13> One thing to be aware of is that there's a lot of polarization around Peterson's material. I'd recommend sticking to his long-form material (presentations/podcasts) on YouTube rather than the many clickbait videos that'll be recommended.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I came across his earlier work, and was disappointed on his latest lectures/videos.</comment></comment></comment>


Feynman video:  The essence of science explained in 63 seconds (1964) - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/05/17/152913171/the-essence-of-science-explained-in-63-seconds

<comment><AUTHOR> It's interesting how good Feynman's handwriting was (on the chalkboard).</comment>